At the outer edge of the terrace ran a tall wrought-iron fence, separating it from the lawn and garden beyond. Farther away rose the oak grove, and in the wood among the shadowed trees a figure moved swiftly, rolling along in a wheelchair, her short gray hair lifting in the breeze, her chair pulled by the big brown poodle. The dog trotted along happily, pulling her, the two of them looking so free, as if they never had to come back inside Casa Capri. She pretended that the woman was Jane. But of course that woman was Bonnie Dorriss's mother. Dillon turned away, feeling lonely.

Each patio was separated from the next by a low stucco wall, with an open space at the end so you could walk from one patio to the next. But when she tried the wrought-iron gates that led outside, they were all locked.

All our nurses are required to carry keys, that's what Ms. Prior said. The wrought-iron fence ended just where Nursing began, turning at right angles to join the building. The Nursing wing went on beyond. Its wall had only high, tiny windows. There was one outer door, like the emergency exit door in a movie theater. From this, a line of muddy wheelchair tracks led away, cutting across the grass and across the concrete walk to the blacktop parking lot. The nine cars in the lot looked new and expensive.

She stroked the tomcat lightly. "I never told them my name. When I was here before, I told them my name was Kathy.

"Jane Hubble was my friend ever since I was seven. We read the Narnia books together, and she took me horseback riding my first time and talked Mama into letting me have riding lessons.

"Jane let me ride Bootsie, too." She sighed. "That trust officer sold Bootsie. I hope he got a nice home. I wish my folks could have bought him, but no one told us, no one called us when Jane got sick."

Joe yawned in her face and wiggled into a new position. She was sure he'd like to run and chase a bird. When he started squirming again, she gripped the nape of his neck. "I can't let you loose, I promised. Please, just stay quiet a little while longer, then we'll go back to Eula." She gave him a sidelong look. "Eula will love holding you."

She left the row of terraces, moving back inside to the hall, and wandered up the hall in the direction of the social room, stopping to check each open room. Hoping maybe she'd see something of Jane's in one of the rooms, a sweater, a book. But she knew she wouldn't.

"Somehow, Joe Cat, I have to get into Nursing. Find Jane for myself-if Jane is there."

Joe was, he thought, maintaining a high level of patience considering that he hated being carried, particularly by a child, and that prowling these small cluttered rooms where lonely old folks waited out their last years, was infinitely depressing. He might tell himself that he took a realistic view of getting old, that getting old was just part of living, but this Casa Capri gig was more tedious than he cared to admit.

As for Dillon playing detective, whatever the kid was up to with her intense search for Jane Hubble, the project had begun to wear. He felt as nervous as fleas on a hot griddle. By the time they returned to the social room he was ready to pitch a fit, so strung out that he actually welcomed being dropped down into Eula Weems's lap. Maybe if he just lay still, he could get himself together.

It was not until late that night, as he and Dulcie hunted across the moonlit hills, that he learned more about Dillon's missing friend. And that he began to wonder if Jane Hubble, and maybe those five other old folks, really had disappeared.

15

Cloud shadows ran along the street where Dulcie trotted, skittish in the wind. Ahead, moonlight shifted across Clyde's cottage. She approached through uncertain heavings of darkness and moonlight; above her the oak's twisted branches plucked at the porch roof, scraping and tapping. But beneath the roof the shadows were deep and still, framing the lit rectangle of Joe's cat door.

Slipping across the damp grass, she leaped to the steps, watching the smear of pale plastic, willing Joe to hurry out. Midnight was already past; the small wild hours, in which the dull and civilized slept, in which the quick creatures of the night crept out to feed and to bare their tender throats for the hunter's teeth, lay before them. The hour of the chase waited, the hour of adrenaline rush and fresh blood flowing.

But as, above her, the moon swam and vanished, and the clouds ran unfettered like racing hounds, the cat door remained empty.

Waiting, she sat down to lick the dew from her claws.

Soon, then, the deepest shadows fled, the moon appeared suddenly again, and at the same instant the plastic door darkened, struck across by a sharp-eared shadow.

The door flipped up. Joe's nose and whiskers pushed out, and he thrust out into the night, jerking his rump through, shaking himself irritably as the plastic flopped against his backside.

She was so glad to see him. "About time! Come on- I'm wired, let's go, the mice will be out in droves."

But Joe had stopped within the shadows of the porch, his ears down, his shoulders and even his stub tail drooping. He looked like an old, old cat, an ancient worn-out relic, a sad cat skin filled with weariness.

She approached him warily. "What?" she said softly. "What's happened?"

He did not move or speak.

She pressed against him, her nostrils filled with the scent of mourning. "Barney? It's Barney."

His eyes were filled with pain.

She sat down close to him, touched him with her nose, and remained quiet.

"His liver gave out. The pain was terrible. There was nothing… Dr. Firetti gave him pain pills, but there was nothing else he could do. It was terminal. He gave him…"

"He put him down?"

Joe nodded. They sat looking at each other. Clyde and Dr. Firreti had done what was needed.

"He's somewhere," she said at last.

"I don't know."

"Remember the white cat. The white cat could not have come to me in dream if he wasn't somewhere. He was already dead when I dreamed of him, and he told me things I couldn't know."

The white cat had led her to the final clue, led her to Janet Jeannot's killer. And this happened long after he died-his flesh was rotted when they found him, his bones bare-yet she had dreamed of him only days before.

There was, Joe knew, no other explanation but that the white cat had spoken to Dulcie from beyond the grave. Yet as they had stood over the white cat's desiccated body, over his frail, bare bones with the little hanks of white fur clinging, a hollowness had gripped him. He had not experienced Dulcie's joy at proof of another life. He had been filled with fear, with a sudden horror of the unknown. Terror of whatever lay beyond had ripped through him as sharp as the strike of a rattlesnake.

She nudged against him, and licked his ear. "Barney is somewhere. He's somewhere lovely, Joe. Why would a sweet dog like Barney go anywhere but somewhere happy?" She pressed against him until he lay down, and she curled up close. "He doesn't hurt anymore. He's running the fields now, the way he was meant to do." And lying tangled together in the shadows of the little front porch, comforting each other, they remained quiet for a very long time.

But at last Joe rose and shook himself. "He was such a clown," he said softly. "Every time I came home from hunting he had to smell all the smells on me, the stink of rabbit, the smell of bird, every trace of blood. He'd get so excited, you could just see him sorting out the scent of mouse, raccoon, whatever, wanting to run, wanting to retrieve those beasts the way he was bred to do."

Dulcie swallowed.

"He'd know when I stopped by Jolly's, too. He went crazy over the smells from the deli; he always had to lick all the tastes off my face."